By Jessie Sitnick, Senior Communications Advisor, Special to Generate Canada
No Bad Questions is a Generate Canada series that explores the tensions and conflicts that are inherent to our work of solving wicked problems. Each article begins with a thorny question – one we all have to grapple with if we want to make progress. “Can we build the energy infrastructure of the future without repeating the mistakes of the past?” That’s a heck of a thorny question. It’s so big and thorny, in fact, that we’re tackling it over two installments.
Part 1 explores and challenges the notion that disrupting nature in the short term is the price we have to pay to save it (and us) in the long term. Part 2 will ask what it means to engage people in this transition, and whether moving at the speed of trust and moving at the speed of business are inherently at odds or inextricably connected.
How do we build at the pace climate demands without being reckless?
Introduction: What if we could solve problems without creating new ones?
There’s this great line from the TV show The Good Place. Jason (Florida hoodlum-cum-Buddhist monk), explains his approach to problem-solving: “I’m telling you, Molotov cocktails work. Any time I had a problem and I threw a Molotov cocktail: boom! Right away, I had a different problem.”
It’s funny because it’s true. We humans have the remarkable ability to solve our immediate challenges by creating newer and bigger ones. As we stand on the cusp of the next big industrial revolution (a response to the damages incurred by the previous one), it’s fair to ask: will we do a better job this time? To steal a phrase from journalist Christopher Pollon, can humans create the energy infrastructure necessary to save ourselves (and everything else) from climate change without “fouling our collective nest, or recreating the social and environmental abuses of the past?”¹
More specifically: How do we build at the pace climate demands without being reckless? What happens when the value of clean economy progress is pitted against the value of local ecosystems? Can we move at the speed of trust and the speed of business? When are the trade-offs inevitable and real? When is the dichotomy fabricated, intended to manipulate and misinform?
While I’m not sure anyone knows all the answers to these questions, the smart people I spoke to for this two-part article helped shed a tremendous amount of light.
In part 1, you’ll meet : Merran Smith (clean economy leader), Alison Cretney (energy transition convenor), Paige Olmsted (conservation finance expert), Dan Woynillowicz (clean energy policy wonk and strategist), and Dr. Colleen Kaiser (clean innovation and governance researcher). Each brings a different perspective to this conversation. Together, they show us why it is critical, and how it may be possible, to act with the urgency climate demands while still putting conservation first.
Quick refresher: Why we need a global energy transition
Arguably, there is no bigger challenge facing our species than the full-scale transformation of our energy systems. To escape the most life-damning impacts of climate change (rising seas, wicked weather, food insecurity, drought, mass extinctions…) we need to massively reduce the amount of fossil fuels we burn to create energy. And we need to do it steadily and quickly over the next 25 years.²
Right now, about 81.5% of the world’s energy comes from fossil fuels³ (in Canada, it’s closer to 65%⁴). Decreasing the amount of greenhouse gas pollution in our atmosphere to a survivable amount means decreasing that percentage to as close to zero as possible.⁵
What we’re talking about here is a mammoth undertaking. In the word’s of the Energy Futures Lab (Generate Canada’s longest standing solution space), “the energy transition requires more than just technological advancement.” It requires understanding how our complex social, ecological, and energy systems are all interconnected.
How do we build at the pace climate demands without being reckless?
We’re going to need to double the grid and we’re going to need to do it by 2025.
-Merran Smith
What this global shift means for Canada
“First off, we’re going to need to double the grid and we’re going to need to do it by 2050,” says Merran Smith, CEO of New Economy Canada. If we want to transition away from fossil fuels, we’ll need expanded electricity capacity to power businesses, transportation, and people’s homes, she explains. “That’s going to mean more wind and solar, which are right now the cheapest forms of energy.”⁶ (Fun fact: In 2024, Canada added more solar capacity to its grid than any other source, including fossil gas).⁷
Increased use of intermittent energy sources means building energy storage, explains Smith. We can use large existing hydro as a big battery, she says, while adding new electricity storage technologies or non-emitting baseload or dispatchable sources of electricity, such as refurbished nuclear facilities to our grids where we can. And in places without access to hydro reservoirs or nuclear, energy storage technologies will be required—like long duration batteries—to smooth out intermittent renewables.
Most of the above is about building out infrastructure to meet our own domestic transition needs. But the global energy shift also creates the opportunity, or onus, for Canada to meet the world’s demands. And that means mining.
“We have the metals and minerals that are needed for making batteries for EVs, for [energy] storage. So that’s an opportunity for jobs, for investment in Canada,” Smith argues.
And that includes Alberta, ground zero for Canadian energy. “There’s a good reason why we are focusing on innovation in two areas right now: clean electricity and critical minerals and materials,” says Alison Cretney, Managing Director of the Alberta-based Energy Future’s Lab. “The first is about meeting Alberta’s own energy transition imperatives. The second is about how Alberta can help Canada and the world make that transition writ large.”
According to the International Energy Agency, mineral demand for clean energy technologies is expected to triple by 2030 and quadruple by 2040.⁸ Canada is actively positioning itself as a major contender in that race, for example by creating a $4 billion Critical Minerals Strategy and 30% investment tax credits for exploration activities.⁹
We’re on it like a herd of turtles
According to Smith and many others, Canada’s not moving fast enough–either to rise to the urgency of climate change or to capture the economic opportunities of the energy transition.
“Right now it’s taking 12 to 15 years to permit a mine in Canada,” Smith says. “That’s too slow. We need those metals and minerals now if we’re going to move on this energy transition and we need them for Canada’s economy. Getting mines built and operating will provide jobs, investment, and economic opportunities in both rural and urban areas.”
This slow pace applies to more than just mines, Cretney reminds us. “The refining and processing of these critical minerals is another essential part of the value chain, and one that can generate good jobs, investment, and a much more secure and integrated clean energy supply chain,” she says. “Developing mines isn’t as helpful if we have to ship the raw materials overseas for processing. It’s the same story, we’re lagging behind.”
We’re behind on renewable energy projects too. According to research conducted by Policy Options in 2023, Canada’s wind and solar capacity falls surprisingly short of other OECD countries.¹⁰ On a per capita basis, the US boasts 52 per cent more wind and solar capacity. Australia beats us three times over. We’re even losing to China, which, by the way, is the single biggest renewable energy investor in the world. In 2023 it more than doubled Europe’s investment and almost tripled the U.S.’s.¹¹ Canada didn’t even make it to the top 8 investors; we’re behind Brazil, the Middle East, Africa, and India.
“Canadians are missing the big story about what’s going on in the energy transition and the reality of what other countries are doing,” says Smith. “Three-hundred and thirty billion dollars is being invested in the U.S. Republican states are building solar manufacturing plants and wind farms and battery plants. China is building a new solar farm every hour. Last year for every one dollar invested in fossil fuel energy, two dollars was invested in renewable energy. That is a massive shift from a decade ago. So Canadians need to understand that clean energy and technologies are ready for prime time. They are already being built at scale in the U.S., China, India, the U.K., as well as in other countries we count as our trading partners and competitors. It’s Canada’s time to step up and really make some changes and say: how are we going to do this faster? How are we going to get to yes faster?”
We’re going to need to double the grid and we’re going to need to do it by 2025.
-Merran Smith
Asking whether it’s “worth it” to sacrifice natural spaces for clean economy infrastructure sets up a false dichotomy.
-Paige Olmsted
Does moving faster mean breaking things?
Mark Zuckerberg’s infamous “move fast and break things” era is over, declared Hemant Taneja in 2019.¹² “‘Minimum viable products’ must be replaced by ‘minimum virtuous products’ – new offerings that test for the effect on stakeholders and build guards against potential harms.” He was talking about digital technology, of course. But the same principle can be applied to any form of innovation–including our energy transition.
But is not breaking things a realistic option? Every person I interviewed said the same exact words: “everything has a footprint.” Anything we build on the ground or dig out of the ground is going to cause some amount of environmental disruption. But, does our need for speed in making this particular omelet warrant as many broken eggshells as it takes to get ’er done? In other words, is disrupting nature in the short term the price we have to pay to save it (and us) in the long run?
“That is a bad question,” says Paige Olmsted, conservation finance specialist at the Smart Prosperity Institute and the Nature Investment Hub. We’re colleagues, so I know she’s teasing me, but she also means it. And she’s not wrong. “I feel like [that question] sets us up to say that there are times when it’s ‘worth it’ to sacrifice natural spaces, which seems like a false dichotomy,” Olmsted argues.
First off, she reminds me, anything that is good for nature is also going to be good for climate–either by helping absorb carbon emissions (as forests and wetlands do) or by supporting adaptation (e.g. reducing the risk of floods and fires). “I think it’s more accurate to say there will inevitably be continued development that is harmful to nature, and there are considerations or safeguards that need to be in place to ensure that harm is reduced as much as possible.”
From Olmsted’s perspective, putting “clean energy development” in a special category doesn’t make sense. “Are we suggesting that EV mining is more virtuous than mining iron ore for bridges?” she asks. We need both, she says, and we should not assume that one of these activities is necessarily going to be better for climate than the other.
Wait, really? Yes. Really. To illustrate her point, we need only shift our attention to one of the most controversial mining endeavors in all of Canada: the Ring of Fire.
Asking whether it’s “worth it” to sacrifice natural spaces for clean economy infrastructure sets up a false dichotomy.
-Paige Olmsted
The Ring of Fire peatlands contain as much as 2 billion tonnes of carbon.
Welcome to the land that breathes
The Ring of Fire sits north of Thunder Bay, in the Hudson Bay Lowlands (Treaty No. 9 territory), stretching some 5,000 square kilometers over forest and bog. It’s home to three towns and nine First Nations communities. Rich in chromite, cobalt, nickel, copper, and platinum, the region has long been in federal and provincial sights for mining development. The rise in demand for critical minerals has set that interest into a fever pitch. Today, 26,167 active mining claims blanket the region.
“Critical minerals like these play a role in the future of low- and zero-emission vehicles and transportation, and help support the transition to a cleaner, sustainable global economy,” touts the Government of Ontario’s Ring of Fire landing page.¹³
But what Ontario’s website doesn’t mention is that the Lowlands are also home to the second largest peatland ecosystem in the world.¹⁴ These peatlands (or “breathing lands” as Indigenous groups in the area call it) help regulate the earth’s climate by “breathing in” and storing carbon dioxide; it’s something this land’s been doing for literally thousands of years. Researchers estimate it contains 1.6¹⁵ – 2 billion¹⁶ tonnes of carbon (that’s almost three times what Canada releases in a year). The Ring of Fire peatlands is our equivalent to the Amazon rainforest.
Assuming that all of the metals and minerals mined out of the Ring of Fire go into EV batteries (instead of, say, smartphones or U.S. military weapons¹⁷), would the carbon emissions avoided outweigh, or even balance out, the carbon emissions created by mining these ores out of the ground?
Seems like a pretty important question, right? But, no one is asking it, at least in the context that matters most, in the course of conducting legally required environmental assessments.
What we count matters
As Olmsted explains, our current system doesn’t count the greenhouse gas emissions released by activities like digging up peatlands for mines or bulldozing the roads that lead to them. Those numbers just don’t show up on the carbon balance sheet. “That’s because of the existing rules for measuring carbon emissions,” says Olmsted, “That doesn’t mean that it’s true or accurate or that we end up with the right numbers. It’s just the way that we are accustomed to doing the accounting” which, she emphasizes, tends to make the economic benefits look good and the environmental costs appear low. “We’re only cheating ourselves.”
The Ring of Fire peatlands contain as much as 2 billion tonnes of carbon.
If we allow a company to drain that wetland for a parking lot, how much is it going to cost us to replace the stormwater overflow services that wetland currently provides?
It doesn’t have to be that way. We could choose to weigh our decisions and their impacts more honestly by accounting for all the value we stand to gain or lose–including the value provided by nature. We already know how to do this. It’s called natural capital accounting.
Municipalities are leading the way on this approach, Olmsted tells me, because they bear a lot of the responsibility for delivering the services that nature provides. Think: clean water, smog reduction, protection from floods and heat. Local governments are starting to ask: if we allow this company to drain that wetland for a parking lot, how much is it going to cost us to replace the stormwater overflow services that wetland currently provides? How many new levees or artificial ponds will it take to provide the same capacity? Especially as floods happen more often, and worse?
Integrating natural capital accounting into the assessment process for major projects could fundamentally change the way we manage this transition. So would measuring economic benefits and environmental benefits on the same scale, says Olmsted. Project assessment processes tend to weigh economic benefits on the provincial scale against environmental harms directly at the project site. That can skew things. Assessing project benefits and costs against longer time scales (beyond a political term or an investment cycle) is also an approach Olmsted argues for.
“They almost sound like no-brainers when you describe them,” she says. But she acknowledges that this would be a fundamentally different approach to decision-making, one that rubs very much against the grain of how development choices have been made in the past. And how many of them are being made in the present.
If we allow a company to drain that wetland for a parking lot, how much is it going to cost us to replace the stormwater overflow services that wetland currently provides?
In December, B.C. announced it will exempt all future wind projects from environmental assessments.
Speeding up the winds of change
Smith (from New Economy) agrees that not every project is the right project. Not every place is the right place for a project. “Canada is a big country. There’s a lot of places we can put things,” she says.
But, when it comes to wind and solar projects, Smith is confident that we can build this capacity much faster and with a lot fewer hoops than we are right now. It’s not that these projects don’t have impacts, she explains, it’s that we know what those impacts are. We have a tremendous amount of data and experience to draw on; we know the risks and how to manage them.
Three days after my chat with Smith, British Columbia announced that it will exempt all new wind projects from environmental assessments (EAs).¹⁸ News of that decision was embedded in the announcement of nine new projects that will generate enough electricity to power 500,000 homes, “making B.C. a clean-energy superpower,” in Premier David Eby’s words.
Had I not been elbow deep in researching this article, I probably would have jumped for joy. But with Olmsted’s words ringing in my mind, I felt a bit ambivalent. Given his significant experience in B.C.’s clean electricity landscape, I asked Dan Woynillowicz (Polaris Strategy and Insight) for his two cents.
On the one hand, he explains, there are permitting processes in place that, in some cases, are duplicated by an EA. So, it’s not as if there are no guardrails. Still, he says, even with the known and avoidable risks of wind, “there are always going to be good projects and bad projects. Will exempting proponents from EAs make it harder to separate the two?” he wonders.
But, Woynillowicz also acknowledges that we are playing a massive game of catch up. We are very far behind the climate eight ball. If we had started building renewable capacity a decade ago, we could be doing it differently. “Now it’s a question of deeply uncomfortable trade-offs. Because, sure, maybe we’re disrupting the habitat of, let’s say for the sake of argument, a “purple spotted toad” to set up turbines in some location, but we also know that this particular species stands no chance in the face of climate change.” Building this wind farm may give us a shot at saving other species: owls and lizards and fish.
In December, B.C. announced it will exempt all future wind projects from environmental assessments.
Frankly, what we need is a pragmatic conversation based on a sober analysis of risk.
-Dr. Colleen Kaiser
One of these things is not like the others
No one likes this conversation about trade-offs (particularly spotted toads). But we don’t have the luxury of not having it.
Still, it feels like there is something slippery here, something potentially reckless in this “we can’t afford not to” mindset. It goes back to Olmsted’s argument against lumping all clean energy projects together in the same category.
“Clean energy and self-sufficiency is important but at what cost?,” tweeted David Williams, Conservative MLA for Salmon Arm, B.C. “There are many worthy projects that our economy depends on. Are they all going to have exemptions?”¹⁹
And there it is.
What happens when the same arguments used to justify exempting wind projects from environmental assessments (climate urgency, clean economy opportunity) are used to justify fast tracking critical mineral mines?
Actually, we don’t have to guess. That’s already underway in Ontario, where Premier Doug Ford has promised to build roads to the Ring of Fire “if I have to hop on a bulldozer myself.”²⁰
Dr. Colleen Kaiser, program director of the Smart Prosperity Institute’s governance and innovation policy stream, is quick to point out the challenges of this kind of rhetoric. “In the States, they call it ‘building cleaner faster’.” It muddies the water, Kaiser suggests, when, frankly what we need is a pragmatic conversation based on a sober analysis of risk.
We can imagine a sort of risk classification system, says Kaiser, that would allow us to identify and streamline projects where we know the benefits are going to far outweigh the risks. “We know this kind of soil and this kind of geography. It’s the same old wind turbines we always build. We know the impacts. So we can assess very quickly that we shouldn’t be worried about this.” In some cases, this should be easy and obvious, they explain, “like, a project to build a solar farm on an abandoned oil and gas field, where the land is already degraded.” Opening up a mine that’s overlapping with Indigenous territory and sitting on a vast, natural carbon sink is a different story.
Kaiser makes it clear, there is an important difference between “streamlining” projects, (i.e. cutting out rules or whole steps in the review process), and moving them faster. Some projects, including mines, are inherently disruptive. In those cases, you can’t skip steps. But you can speed up the process, for example by taking a “coordinated governance approach.” They use the example of inter-provincial transmission lines. “Maybe you don’t need to do an EA federally and in Quebec and in Ontario. Maybe we can come to an understanding that we really just need one assessment. You’re looking for where there’s duplication or inefficiencies that would make sense to coordinate from a governance perspective.”
But Kaiser is fast to warn that it is one thing to move faster through an environmental review process; it is quite another to speed faster through community consultation and engagement. While you can make generalized assumptions about certain geographies and ecosystems in terms of environmental risk, “every community is different. You can’t bypass that.”
The big elephant in this story: The People
Kaiser is right. Any discussion of building new infrastructure is purely theoretical (and frankly irresponsible) in the absence of considering the communities who live on and, in many cases, have rights and titles to the lands impacted by these projects. Smith, Olmsted, Woynillowicz, and Kaiser all grounded their answers to my questions in terms of what this means for people. That’s because communities–whether they play the role of proponents, opponents, or anything in between–will shape how the clean energy transition in Canada unfolds.
That is the subject of part 2 of this article where we explore–among other themes–whether there is an inherent conflict, or inseparable link, between moving at the speed of trust and moving at the speed of business. Stay tuned!
If this piece kick-started your curiosity about the energy transition in Canada, check out the great work being done by folks at New Economy Canada, the Smart Prosperity Institute, and our Generate Canada solution spaces: The Nature Investment Hub and the Energy Futures Lab.
¹ https://thetyee.ca/Culture/2023/10/09/Christopher-Pollon-Pitfall/
² https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_SYR_SPM.pdf
⁴ https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/canada
⁵ This does not necessarily mean reducing the amount of oil and gas produced in the world to zero, but rather vastly reducing the extent to which oil and gas is combusted for energy. As the IEA explains: “Even in a 1.5 °C scenario, some 24 million barrels per day of oil is produced in 2050 (three-quarters is used in sectors where the oil is not combusted, notably in petrochemicals), as well as some 920 billion cubic metres of natural gas, roughly half of which is used for hydrogen production.” See: https://www.iea.org/reports/the-oil-and-gas-industry-in-net-zero-transitions/executive-summary
⁶ According to the IEA “Solar PV and wind are the cheapest options for new generation.” See: https://www.iea.org/news/rapid-rollout-of-clean-technologies-makes-energy-cheaper-not-more-costly
⁸ https://www.iea.org/topics/critical-minerals
⁹ https://www.investcanada.ca/news/canada-offers-unmatched-investment-ready
¹² https://hbr.org/2019/01/the-era-of-move-fast-and-break-things-is-over
¹³ https://www.ontario.ca/page/ontarios-ring-fire
¹⁴ https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/fee.2437
¹⁵ https://macleans.ca/society/environment/ring-of-fire-ontario/
¹⁸ https://news.gov.bc.ca/releases/2024ECS0048-001643
¹⁹ https://x.com/Shuswapland/status/1866239949940662725
²⁰ https://x.com/fordnation/status/974702173568323584
Frankly, what we need is a pragmatic conversation based on a sober analysis of risk.
-Dr. Colleen Kaiser
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